Week 11 Wrap Up

Biggest Discovery

I have learned to blog,  I was reminded how much I dislike having to do assignments, I am amazed how much I learned by having to spend time in the different databases,  I acquired an interest in genealogy,  and now I am proud of myself for sticking to it and finishing.  I have used the data bases in the past.  I have taken workshops on Learning Express, Britannica, and NoveList.  I made a point of doing some of the research at home to get a better understanding of the patron's point of view.  I think the biggest discovery that I made was the Hobbies and Crafts Reference Center.  We have a couple of craft groups that meet here and this is a wonderful resource that none of us had explored before.

Promotion

As a staff we have talked a great deal about MARVEL.  I have shared interesting facts and discoveries with the staff.  We all spent some time in Ancestry Library, sharing what we found and helping each other find family information.  Learning Express will take the staff some time to explore.  We are all going to take the U.S. Citizenship test after the first of the year, not only to see how the site works but to make us all better informed. 
A weekly link to a different database on our facebook page is one idea that we will explore.
We have had some genealogy classes in the past and we hope that they will start up again in the new year.  Ancestry Library has been a part of that class.
I think that as the staff becomes more familiar with Marvel and Learning Express we will all be better able to serve our patrons and promote these resources.

Week 10 EbscoHost Family of Databases and Ebsco eBooks

I went to Masterfile Premier and searched for Good Housekeeping.   There is a Publication Detail that provides ISSN, publisher, address, subjects covered, URL, frequency, bibliographic records ( 01/01/1984 -present ) and full text ( 01/01/1996 to present. )  I searched for a coulple of craft weaving magazines that were not listed.  When I searched by subject for crafts I found 27 magazines.

Using Masterfile Premier basic search I entered " zinc food sources.  I got 14 results then refined my search to full text articles.  The first of 5 articles, Don't Forget the Zinc from the Saturday Evening Post listed good sources of zinc as mest, fortified cereals, and beans.  I searched for Harlem Renaissance and got 662 hits.  Having no knowledge of this subject I limited by search to reference books.  Harlem Renaissance by Keira Stevenson was a wonderful overview of this topic and gave me enough information to start my research. 

Ebsco eBooks
Digital Literacy is on my mind so I searched for an e-book.  The first title, a 92 page book by James Paul Gee was very interesting.  I read from the "most relevant pages from this eBook" and think that when I find time I will come back and read the entire book.  I am intrigued by the phrase  " literacy practices embedded in contemporay popular culture."

Constitution Day.   I did not found anything that I thought would be a good match.  The history books
are long and more scholarly than needed for this topic.

Oklahoma in the publisher box gives you 105 results all published by the University of Oklahoma Press.  I narrowed my search by putting history in the search box.  There were many books about history  published by the university that were not about Oklahoms so I narrowed my search again and got 19 books, most of them were about Oklahoma history. 

I liked the home page of the ebook collection.  I did quite a bit of browsing and will come back to spend more time looking around.

Week 9 Learning Express

Learning Express is an amazing resource.  I  took a BTOP training course so I have some knowledge of what is available.  I set-up an account and started to browse the available learning centers.  I started in the Skill Building for Adults and went to Personal Finance Skills Improvement.  I found some very basic information in an e-book "Goof-proof Personal Finance" from 2004.  Next I went to Reading Skills Improvement.  I opened the Reading Comprehension Practice and spent some time.  I was always a very poor test taker and was interested to see what I could learn.  The seven strategies for success were very helpful and I think if someone took the time to do some of the 501 questions they would learn a great deal.  With my new strategies in hand I went to College Students and took a Reading Comprehension test.  I did very well, but only did a few question and forgot to check my time.  I think I may have run out of time if I did the entire test.  If someone takes the time to use these resources they should have no problem preparing for an exam.

Job Search & Workplace Skills.  I decided to see what they had about interviewing.  I have hired all of the staff here at the library and I find the interview to be the msot important part of the process.  Looking at these resources was very interesting.  The first resource is a Career Course: Interview to Get the Job You Want.  I went through most of this information and thought that it was very informative and helpful.  I will be a better interviewer in the future.

I searched for "travel agent" and got 18 e-books.  The e-books were about real estate, becoming a border patrol agent and law enforcement.  Not what I was looking for, but I opened the book "Becoming a Border Patrol Agent."  This is a 176 page "indispensible career guide" and I found it very interesting.  I learned rigth off that I was too old to consider this career chioce.

This is a wonderful resource, but it does take some time to introduce to patrons.  I would like to see the tutorial available on the home page.  Many of our patrons who need these skills have a hard time finding what they want ( not Learning Express' fault, they just do not have the skills to search .)  Several times I have taken a patron to the Jobs and Careers section and then together we have searched for the rigth information and then left them to read or study what we have found.

Week 8 - Genealogy

This database has been very popular at the library.  I spent some time seaching for information about me and found very little.  There was one entry under my name.  A yearbook picture from the UM Prism 1967.  I am not sure why that is the only year that was available, I have 4 yearbooks with my picture in each year.  When I seached for Helen Ruth Fogler I got a great many results that were not me.  When I removed my middle name I got only a few results but still just the picture.  When I searched by my married name I got one hit from the US Public Records and that was listed under my ex-husband's name and his office address.  I could not find my birht certificate.

I seached for my grandfather and found all kinds of things.  The 1040 census record was very informative.  Not only did it list his address but it listed all household members including the two people that work for him, 11 people in all.  I looked on the map to see where Hinsdale is in relation to Chicago.  There were many suggested records that I could search.  It was interesting to look at his World War I draft registration card and see that he was registered in Knox County Maine but he was living in New Jersey and teaching at Princeton.  I found his marriage certificate and saw that my grandmother's middle name was spelled wrong.  When you look at the original document you can see that it is spelled right.  One of the more interesting documents was a passenger list for a ship arriving in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1948.  His occupation is listed as "President."  I will have to check with my aunt,  he was president of either Montgomery Wards or W.T. Grants then.   Maybe he went to open a store. 

I looked at the "Photo and Maps" tab and was not very successful.  Using "Maine" as the keyword was not useful at all.  When I searched Piscataquis County Maine I got better results but I found the maps to be hard to see and not very useful.

Week 7 Consumer Health Resources

Health Source - Consumer Edition

I looked at the publication list and was surprised by the number of books that were included.  Many of the books were several years old.  I searched for "calcifications" found during a mammogram.  The most recent article was in a 2003 Prevention magazine.  The article was easy to understand but in the 346 words it was more about breast cancer in general than calcifications.  I listened to the Early Cancer Clue section and found that to be very interesting.  I checked out the British and Australian accents for fun.

Medline Plus

I have used Medline before but not Medline Plus.  I really liked this site and will use it as the first place to send patrons.  The format is easy to use and the home page gives you all kinds of options including a medical dictionary which will answer the majority of the questions we get.  On November 23rd the Health News articles were on kids with diabeties, soy-rich diets and hot flashes, and teen smoking.  Popular searches were aspirin, colera, hypertension, shingles, and tuberculosis.  I followed the shingles link and found a great deal of information.  The shigles article was very infomative and easy to understand.  There were 339 articles but by refining my search with the suggeated keyword I found 41 articles on the vaccine.

Simvastatin is a medication taken to lower cholesterol.  I do not think you could come up with a question that could not be answered using this resource.  Besides the basic information of why it is perscribed , how it should be used and side effects if answers the questions of what to do if you miss a dose and storage conditions.

I seached breast calcifications and found an excellent article from the Mayo Clinic.  Another article had some very good information on when further testing is needed beyond a mammogram.  It had a connection to stereotactic core biopsy that was very informative and easy to understand.  I learned a great deal more than I did in the Health Source.

I watched two videos.  They were both very good.  The first one on breast reconstruction was very technical and over my head.  The second one about putting tubes in childrens ears was easy to understand and very reassuring for parents of children that are about to have this surgery.

Week 6 Business Resources

I am still a week behind from being on vacation 3 weeks ago.  No outside meetings on the calendar this week so maybe I can catch up.  One of the advantages of being behind is reading other blogs and getting a feel for the assignment.  I have not spent any time in these data bases and have never been asked for information about them.  Several people have commented about not being able to access Value Line at home.

In Business Source Complete I searched FM radio and got results using SmartText searching.  Most of the articles seemed to be Academic Journals and Periodicals.  Limiting my search to full text cut the results down some, but limiting it to Scholarly Journals really limited the result.  I liked the Visual Seach,  it gave me a number of ideas on the direction I could take with my search.

I seached small business in EconLit.  Using advanced seach I searched for small buimess and then limited it by EPA and then by tax policy.  All of the results seemed to be old until I realized that the Publication date was set at 2002.  It took me a while to figure out how to change the search date.

Regional Business News had the publication date set from 1985 - 2005.  I seached for information on Great Northern Paper Company and had to limit my seach to Maine, I did not get any results.  I seached L L Bean and did fine some interesting articles.

I spent some time looking around Value Line.  I looked at all the reports and looked up several companies.  It was interesting to read about the history and prospects of the those companies.

I found the Wall Street Journal site the easiest to use.  I limited the seach to small business and health insurance.  I found articles going back to 1984 and again limited my search to the last three years. 

I have a learned about these databases and have a very small understanding of what information is available.  The lesson I really learned from this weeks exercises is that it is very hard to navigate and use a database when your knowledge of the content is so limited.  I can better understand the frustration that many of our partons experience when introduced to MARVEL.

Week 5 NoveList Plus

I have used NoveList often and am always amazed at the information I find and how easy it is to use.  I have attended a couple of training sessions on this data base and yet I still learn something new each time.  I seached for Vince Flynn's "Mitch Rapp" novels.  I had a patron ask about the order of the books. Using the  "More About this Series" we learned that NoveList lists the books in order according to the author's website.  It did tell us that the books progress up to a certain book and then they jump to an earlier time and that time frame is continued in the next book.  Using the "More about the Author" tab we were able to connect to his website.  I liked looking at the different views.  I had not paid attention to this option before.  The "Title Only" option is wonderful for printing lists.

I had a good time (way too much time) looking at the read-alikes.  Having the short description and the reason readily available made it very easy to look at all nine suggestions.  Our library has a small group of patrons that want to read everything an author has written and in the proper order.  We have worked hard to recommend like authors but after several years it is hard to stay ahead of these readers.  I am planning to sit down with several of these patrons and introduce them to NoveList.  I have mentioned it before but have not taken the time to make  them sit down and use it.

I spent some time looking at Award Winners and Book Discussion Guides.  I found a guide for the book our reading group is reading this month.  I will be taking the books suggested for further reading to the meeting.  I think the Read Alike sections and the sugesstions for displays will help us promote our collection by connecting our patrons with older books that relate to what they are currently reading.

I did spend some time reading other blogs.  I especially enjoyed reading about the series that others were interested in.  My list of books to read just keeps getting longer and longer.